I was entertained by voyagers (2)

1

Abducted by aliens, some would say, but
entertained, I’d call it. Their ‘ship’
was not so much a saucer, more
a flying casserole. They took me in,
and sat me down, gave me a little bracelet,
a copper wrist-band that received their speech,
translated it to mine, and mine to theirs.

Well, yes, I was naive, I took a risk,
but neither more nor less than if I’d joined
a group of Malagasy or Chinese; should I assume
they’d all be killers or enslavers? People
from across whatever sea, are what they are.

They’re not six-armed, or green. They’re not
intelligent amphibians, or birds. It’s the apes
that crack it, everywhere it seems.

They’re very pale, and have big ears
- not Mickey Mouse or even Mr Spock,
but noticeably big. Enough for some
to label them the Luggies or the Shells
and shove them in a mental holding-camp.

(I heard some youth, some higher-level shooter
who had been zapping aliens all night,
away from his console for a pack of fags,
had seen a voyager and shot at him and missed.)

They gave me a bowl of fruit like lychees,
and a sweet drink, and talked and listened.

So much to tell. But I must begin with this:
for though we talked about our wars, our gods,
our science and theirs, our arts and theirs,
it was the ‘showing’ of their homeworld
that got me going - or I should say, made me
speak without thinking. I am sorry for it.

2

The homeworld name came through as Oo-ish, almost Wish.
Nothing to do with wishing, I’m quite sure, but when they ‘showed’
their ‘film’ it was a wish-come-true for me. They ‘turned it on’

and a forest slowly formed around me - spongey underfoot, a mass
of bramble-bracken-broom, trunks looming up and sharpening, as if
a mist were clearing; and a blend of odours I could not unmix.

And then, as if my childhood sight had been restored - I took
my glasses off - each rib and furrow on the barks was clear,
and every grey-green, blue-gray lichen, and against the sky
- a mile above it seemed - I fancied I could count the leaves.
Sounds too were magnified: a bird-call far away: four short
high penny-whistle notes, a long glissando down to bass.

I listened with the hearing of an owl, to the groans and howls
of chafing branches, and soft thuds of falling twigs and cones.
I could not tell image from reality: I seemed to walk, could feel
the crackling of the undergrowth, approached a clearing where
a giant had fallen, and another stood naked, cloven from top to root
- by lightning, I suppose. But the fallen tree - I don’t know how

to start describing it, it was the loveliest thing I ever saw.
I stood below it; could not see beyond it. This dead thing
was alive. It was in fancy dress! On its flanks and ridge

a crowd of mushrooms - drifts of gentian blue, with little
bronze-caps flowing into them; snow-white thimbles
on groves of slender stalks; broad hands like ivory,
each with three fingers and a thumb, explaining, begging;
fat sturdy growths like the upturned feet of elephants;
sea-green and azure vases, meant for a single rose.

And just beyond, a score or more (that I could see)
of saplings reaching for the light: slim, delicate,
tapering towards young canopies of oval leaves,
deep turquoise, glossy, crimson at the edges,
that did not droop but seemed to climb the air.

Oh, such prolific life, in the midst of death!
Such a will to live, lavish and passionate!


Then I cried out, for I was flying, hovering,
above the trees; vertigo and fear of dying almost
overwhelmed me, but I closed my eyes and tamed it.
It was a ‘film’, I half-remembered; but this ‘cut’
was shocking! A great bird laboured past me,
big as an albatross, obsidian eye in a patch of white,
expansive wings ribbed black and sand and gold.

And the lovely world came into focus, and I seemed
to see a hundred miles. I caught a restless light
from a far-off ocean. In the middle ground, the forest
seemed more orderly, more husbanded; hollows
and little hills were open to the sky. It might have been
an earth-scene - but for the turtles. Sleeping turtles.

Carapaces, grooved and plated, coffee, chestnut, every brown,
their plates configured to their curve and sweep; some gold,
some green; some covered in eight-sided buttons, others
smooth as an egg; some small as houses, some as large
(it seemed) as St Peter’s dome. I was deceived, of course -

I waited for some sleepy heads or languid legs
to venture out, but nothing happened. Then the zoom
began to work again, and flecks and specks appeared, becoming

insects, tiny creatures, something live and moving in and out
and underneath the shells, and overground from shell to shell.
And slowly they were magnified, became themselves, and I

cried out again - for these were people! Busy people!
This was a city! A turtle city! Turtle City!

3

I do regret what afterwards I said,
but what they said then, that sobered me,

I have since accepted. Fired up with the romance
of space, and sci-fi odysseys, I got lyrical. ‘I look

at the night sky’, I said. ‘I see the fires. There are worlds
too close to the fire, and worlds too far away.
But there are worlds in just the proper place,
their years three-fifty to three-eighty days,
their atmosphere as warm as a hatching egg.

In time we will set sail, and cross the archipelago.
Some islands there are bleak, no castaway,
no palm tree, but others - we shall visit them,
and we will breathe there, talk and listen’.

But will you go, a voyager said,
for blood and metals? Your death-doers,
your kill-makers, will go. The notion
translated strangely, as if they had
no word for it. Another said:

Do not go there. By all means go
to the dead Moon, dead Mars, but
do not go where there is other life.

You do not know
how to live with others.